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by Richard Katz,
Joshua Tree Flower Essence:
Joshua Tree is a key flower essence to help us find our true path in life when past trauma has blocked our way. With Joshua Tree this past encompasses not only our lifetime, but also the emotional inheritance from our family tree.
Joshua Tree flower essence has been particularly helpful for Mary Davis, a credentialed life coach in Tucson, Arizona, who uses flower essences in her wellness consultation practice. She described how Joshua Tree essence freed her from the effects of her family’s traumatic World War 2 experiences, and gave her the inner strength to overcome a debilitating physical disease and forge her own path in life. A Legacy of Generational Trauma All of Mary’s family—her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles—were World War 2 refugees during the Holocaust. Mary belongs to the first generation born in the USA. Her mother’s family spent six years in a refugee resettlement camp in Germany, which had been a concentration camp during the war. Mary’s father, a teenager at the time, and his family lived in Colombia while his family waited for admittance to the US. At one point his situation became intolerable and he ran away for two weeks, living alone in the jungle. Mary’s parents did not talk much about their refugee experiences. In a recent talk with her mother it became clear that discussions about the past were not conducive to her mother’s wellbeing because they brought up painful memories of trauma. Due to the spiritual and energetic nature of such extraordinary generational trauma, Mary still deeply feels its impact. She said, “I felt that there was a family curse, and it was this darkness that just permeated my mind and heart.” When she discovered Joshua Tree flower essence, she felt that it dispelled this darkness. “If I don’t take it,” she said, “ I can feel the darkness creeping back in again ." Mary described the effect of Joshua Tree as giving her the freedom to live her own life, not to be invisibly bound by her family’s past. She also said that the essence helped her with acceptance. Her mother and her daughter have different attitudes and values, but she feels at liberty to live her own life and accept that they have theirs. Mary concluded, “I've got my own life. I've got my own hopes and dreams, and gifts to share. I want to, I'm going to, and now doors are opening for me.” Joshua Tree and Grief Relief for Layered Trauma
Layered on top of her family’s grief and trauma and that of her illness were the sudden deaths of significant family members and a close friend in a short six-month period in 2019. She used the Grief Relief Flourish Formula along with the Joshua Tree essence. Mary explained, “There's not a grief that stands alone. It's connected like a matrix. When you hit one grief pocket it sometimes triggers others. F.E.S. Grief Relief formula helps tremendously to alleviate grief. I actually have it in my car for a quick spray if I get a 'grief bubble' while I'm out and about. Over the years, F.E.S. products really contributed to giving me hope and strength when I didn’t think I could endure another day.” For Mary, Joshua Tree works together with Grief Relief, as each new grief can light up past traumatic grief. For Mary sometimes a present grief can reawaken the unfathomable inherited grief trauma of the Holocaust.
Angelica Flower Essence:
Angelica is one of a number of flower essences that have aided Mary’s work with Joshua Tree. Angelica flower essence is used for difficult life passages when we feel alone and abandoned at a core level. Angelica can help us realize that, no matter how challenging our life circumstances, we are not alone. Guidance and protection are available to us, if we would only lift up our gaze to the spiritual world, which is our Source. Mary finds Angelica offers support when facing all the issues that Joshua Tree “brings up.” Angelica is a good choice, because it connects us with our “guardian angel,” with the spiritual guidance that leads us along our destiny path towards the future, rather than being caught in past karma. Mary feels that with the help of Joshua Tree, Angelica and other flower essences, she has shaken off the shackles of generational trauma and a debilitating diagnosis, to find her true calling in life. Additional Companion Essences to Consider:
Find Outside Therapeutic Support: Don’t go it alone. Out of her experience, Mary offers the following advice: “For people considering Joshua Tree essence, they might want to first identify their support team, which could include a credentialed life coach. Joshua Tree might bring up experiences and feelings they thought were settled long ago. A life coach will help you stay focused on your day-to-day responsibilities and your long-held dreams while you work through the emotions and new opportunities that Joshua Tree might release. If powerful residual trauma resurfaces, then the help of a licensed counselor might also be needed.” Overcoming a Disability Diagnosis Flower essences such as Joshua Tree also helped Mary overcome a major life challenge. She had been living with chronic illness, since experiencing a tick bite with a bulls-eye rash some 32 years earlier. Although she suspected Lyme disease, it was only after 24 years of expensive doctor visits and using alternative therapies that she found a doctor who agreed to test her for Lyme. However, the long-sought diagnosis only brought new challenges.
Mary described her experience when she received her diagnosis.
“The assistant showed me in but kept looking down and avoiding eye contact with me. I was thinking, ‘Wow, somebody must have died this morning, or they got some really bad news.’ I went in to meet the physician and the physician would not look me in the eyes either. It didn’t take long for the physician to get to the point: ‘You have very, very, very, VERY late-stage Lyme disease.’ “My next thought was: ‘OK great! I've made it to a diagnosis. Great! Now I'll treat it and I'll get better’. But then the physician said, ‘This is a disabling condition, you are disabled, you can never work again.’” Mary was grateful for the clarity of the diagnosis, but she could not accept the bleak prognosis. This would mean giving up all dreams and her goals for training as a life coach. She would risk becoming homeless and destitute as had happened to her refugee family. After several visits with the physician, Mary recounts, “I still had not applied for social security disability benefits. I knew only one thing: I was going to get better and go back to work, I wouldn’t need it. The physician was shocked, and pounded their fist on the desk saying, 'You must apply for disability. You don't know how sick you are!' “That was a damaging way of getting me to understand how serious my condition was, because then I took it in, and it began to kill my spirit. I began to cut back on doing my best to live my life to the fullest. In retrospect, that took the wind out of my sails, and I began my descent on the slippery slope to believing, ‘I can’t.’"
When she began to believe, “I can’t.”, Mary felt herself to be a powerless victim of life. Given her heritage of family and ethnic persecution, Mary was particularly vulnerable to the “victim” mindset. Initially her diagnosis triggered a sense of dark hopelessness, even suicidal thoughts, exacerbated by her experiences in the social services system.
Thus, Mary saw she needed to deal with the residual intergenerational trauma in order to craft a fresh start. With the help of Joshua Tree and other flower essences, more EMDR counseling, continuing with her own personal life coach, and continued botanical remedies she began to gain hope and strength. As a direct result of her experience of being declared "disabled," she has vowed to help people who are “other-abled” to reclaim their lives. She is transforming the family heritage of victimhood into an empowering path of compassion and healing service. She reflected on the physician who gave her the Lyme and disability diagnosis, and how she can help those who are losing hope.
“Doctors do what they do based on the science, data and their past experiences, not on promise and possibility. As a life coach, I would not give a diagnosis and take away a person’s hope in the same breath. I would give the diagnosis, the prognosis, the treatment plan, and then encourage the patient to stay as active as possible. I would turn their attention away from what they have lost as a course of the illness, to look for the gifts that might come from it. "I've seen multiple fellow 'other-abled' people who appear to have quit living meaningful lives after receiving a bleak diagnosis. Many who end up on disability and go into the social services system are broken by their experiences. I have looked into the eyes of several people in this situation. There is nobody home. There is no light, there is no life. Their souls are shattered, and that is what happened to me. "I cannot get away from the images of the broken spirits I’ve met along the way. They burn in my heart and I wonder, ‘How can I help others living through something like this come back too? How can I support them to thrive again?’ "The answer I get is this: Put my oxygen mask on first. Stabilize. Learn to thrive again. Then a door will open and I can help others." About Mary Mary describes her life journey as follows:
In addition to being a daughter, mom, grandma and friend, Mary Davis is also an ICF Credentialed Life Coach, Licensed Chaplain, Reiki Master, Integrative Energy Therapy Master and Instructor, and flower essence practitioner in Tucson, Arizona. She is eager to help others interested in a body/mind/spirit approach to living their best life ever. Contact information is available on her web site . For more information about the Joshua Tree plant and flower essence, please see the following articles:
Botanical Profile of the Joshua Tree by Richard Katz
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